TV Advert Final Evaluation

Our task was to redesign an existing Unilever product to a different target audience and demographic. Once we had decided our product, we were set with making an advert with the idea of appealing to the new audience.

Our chosen product was Brut. We went with the idea to retarget Brut to a female demographic of around 16 - 34 years young and a psychographic of equality and success. People with a driven motivation, passion and a bit of grit. For example: doctors, scientists, actresses and the sporty. This was decided after we had reviewed everyone's ideas and felt that this could be a strong direction for our team to work on as it fits in with the modern day views. Originally, Brut has always been targeted towards men around 18 - 40, working class and with an interest in sports. Therefore, marketing it towards women for them to use, opens up about half the population which Brut had been ignoring.

We collected feedback by two methods. One was a class critique and the other was a survey sent out online. Within the class critique, we were told that the pace was good and the camera movements were enjoyable; however, the focus pull was too much. We also had a few class members approve of the way which we portrayed females. They felt that women often get used for their sex appeal whereas we sold the product using their confidence and ambition. Another  thing which the class felt was amiss was the lack of physical connection to Brut and the dancer. Although we do have Brut is some of the shots with her, we don't have anything which shows her holding our product. We sent out the survey one facebook and asked other people who were not class members to give their feedback. Still waiting the majority of results.

Well, given the class feedback, I do feel that we achieved our goal of portraying women with ambition and confidence and hopefully they too felt like it was from influence of Brut.

In the end, we had two Bruttagettes; one was a scientist and the other a dancer. The dance studio was a lot easier to create the atmosphere for as all we had to do was use a room with some mirrors and there you have it! A stereotypical dance studio. This worked really well as were able to get the dancer's reflection in the shots along with her movement, not to mention the place was nicely lit, creating this natural and believable scene of somebody perfecting their art. The science lab was not as successful I feel. Although we used a lab in the college, it was quite empty and only ever looked like a classroom. We tried to spruce it up a bit with some beakers and colourful liquids, which helped, but only got us so far. So, to get around this, we used mainly closeups in this section where we had placed our props. This helps to create the illusion that this lab is full of scientific equipment because this is what you see filling the frames. Achieving our Mise-en-scene. Our intention was originally to create this feeling of  fast pace, success and motivation; however, became a bit more relaxed. In the end we show you a short narrative of to successful women performing their goals: dancing and scientific discoveries.

 I feel that our advert has some great camera work. For instance, with the dancer (Tia - seen at 12 seconds in), we used a dolly on our tripod so we could crab along with her movement. This helped to keep up with her energy and flow whilst dancing; giving the video a comfortable and natural pace. Furthermore, because we maintained this movement, it  helped the audience feel like they were with her because the camera remains by her side thus drawing them in with the action. We also used focus pulls (seen at 21 seconds), a pan for the beginning establishing shot and slides. Another big thing on our camera work was composition. In many of the shots we framed our main focal points on one of the cross sections of the rule of thirds and left negative space where we felt appropriate. We even managed to get the dancer and her reflection falling on either side of the rule of thirds (seen at 34 seconds). During the editing process, we applied some slow zooms on some of the shots which didn't have as much interest or pace in them (example seen at 16 sec and  22 sec). This helped to make them more interesting for the viewer and keeped to the pace of the video. For the music, I originally wanted to use some type of fast paced percussion like chinese war drums to convey this sense of competitive, tough and driven female career.  However, we couldn't find any music which was copyright free and opted for a slow, rocky jazz. I feel like the jazz works better with the shots and activities which we collected as the dancing was in the style of ballet and most of labs scenes lacked fast motion to pull the war drum music off.


Do I think our end advert sells the product to our new intended target audience? No, I don't think it quite hits the mark. I feel that our advert is a bit too slow and lacks a bit of excitement and energy which is what I feel our intended audience desires. They are young, ambitious, driven and hardworking. Our advert has a softer tone which is nice but might not appeal to the real "Brutagettes". I feel that if we could have made it faster paced, placed snappy music to it and gave it a bit more pizzazz then yeah, we would sell it! However, I still feel that our advert could sell to women but those of a softer tone. I do think we had the right idea with the age range of our actresses and their activities but we could have done with a third performing a physical/sporty activity to help spread our psychographic a bit and make it more appealing to a wider audience than what we achieved. I think our story and narrative has potential but again, lacking that third activity could have helped wonders for our intended audience.

Our advert uses AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action) to help sell our product. Awareness is caught from the chords struck on the guitar at the beginning of the advert. They are in the major scale which is associated with happy feelings. Therefore, when the audience hears the slow, happy jazz chords their attention will be drawn. We then immediately hit their interest with "Brut gives me the confidence to dance" and "make scientific discoveries". By the lovely, young ladies saying this, we name our product and the reason for them speaking about it is because it gives them confidence. Ladies who are watching this will hopefully identify with our actresses and too, desire confidence thus sparking desire for our product. We try to create more interest and desire by showing our actresses performing what Brut gives them the confidence to do. Dancing in a studio and working in a science lab. Once again, our viewers will hopefully be connecting and aspiring to what they see on the screen and want to do these things or something they need but just lack a bit of confidence but this product solves that. Lastly, we end the advert with a final shot showing off our product with the scientist hard at work in the background. Text appears on the screen, 'The new fragrance for Women' (reinforcing who the product is for) and then underneath, 'Become

a Brutagette'. This gives the audience and identity to follow, women with confidence, and we are encouraging them to take action by becoming one. Which you do by buying our product and using Brut.

We tried to tell our audience that men are not the only ones to use Brut, women can as well. We also wanted to show our audience that the nice fragrance of Brut will give you the confidence to achieve in your chosen field. To help convey this message across to our intended audience, we used young, actresses, telling the listener that Brut gives them confidence to achieve in their chosen field and then show a range of actions involving said fields. By using the young actresses, we would appeal to any young female viewers of around 16- 34, as hopefully they would identify themselves with the ladies on the screen and feel like that could be me. We may also receive a secondary age range with our advert because young girls can be rather impressionable and often want to be seen as more mature. Therefore, we could find that girls between 12-15 wanting to buy the product so they can identify with the Ladies in the advert. The reason for wanting to copy the actresses using Brut can be explained by Vicarious Reinforcement.They see that the young actresses on the screen are succeeding in their chosen field, and the reason for this is because Brut is giving them the confidence to achieve. So, they see Brut gives confidence which they too desire and this motivates them to buy our product for the positive rewards which it brings.

I feel that our advert reaches a decent quality and could be aired on Tv. Our advert doesn't break any of the BCAP codes. The ones which would most likely apply to us are the 03 Misleading Advertising and 04 Harm and Offence, which I feel our advert doesn't infringe. The only slight problem their could be is if people literally think Brut is a bottle of confidence. As our actresses say, Brut gives me confidence, some people make take this literally which would infringe on ,3.1- Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. However, we do say that this is a fragrance at the end of the advert which is very clear and would stop anybody thinking Brut is literally a bottle of confidence. We also don't affect any of the Harm and Offence codes like 4.1, as our advert is about excepting a previously ignored gender and aiming interest towards them. Although our advert does not contain a variety of ethnicities, we do not show any discrimination against them. Perhaps even next time, we could focus on getting more of a mix to help avoid that slight possibility as well as appealing to a wider audience.

Our final advert differs quite a bit from our original storyboard (Paper Work). We were originally going to have three to four actresses. One to do with science, one the theatre, one dance and the other playing hockey. This would hopefully appeal to a large audience and would cover a variety of psychographic interests. However, due to illness and time constraints, we ended up with just two of the four. Although this worked, I feel like we lost a lot of impact because of the lack of activities. I also believed that we were going to have a faster, more competitive feel to our add but, as previously mentioned, ended with a softer advert. Because we only used two girls, we also had to add a few more shots for each of them to make up for the others. We did however, stick to a lot of the shots which we had already thought about. Particularly the ones involving the dolly and other camera movements. We also found our selves making additional storyboards and shot lists as when we came to editing, we just needed a few more shots to help the flow. However, we do stick with the idea of Brut being marketed for women and tried to show them in a equal light. I feel like we achieved this and when we were receiving student feedback, one of the compliments was that, "It's nice to see women being portrayed without focusing on their sex appeal". Because of this, I feel like we achieved our goal of marketing it towards women with ambition and a their confidence rather than relying on their good looks to sell the product.

As ever, I feel like our add could have been a lot better. To me, it feels that it is a bit too slow and dainty for the original tone which I was rooting for. I really would have liked a fast paced, war beat underneath quick and fast cuts of action showing success and ambitions. Perhaps drawing connotations to tribal warriors. This would have shown you a different side to women which is rarely portrayed and I feel like this would have helped to sell. You would also be keeping the roots of Brut as they have always pushed their product with sport connections. Therefore, an adrenaline filled advert would give you a similar buzz to what you receive that. If I did another advert, I would also try to be more aware of our teams makeup next time... Working on an advert focused on women with an androcentric heavy team made things very difficult. As nobody was willing to put on a wig or squeeze into a dress we had to borrow females from other groups which caused complications, as they too had their own agendas. I also feel that we didn't prepare for our shots very well. Our concept was good and ideas of locations was varied too but we didn't give much thought on enough shots. I would liked to have experimented more with similar transitions that is seen in our add at 12 to 15 secs. The camera work crabs from left to right on both shot and therefore, when cut together, the flow seamlessly together. So, if we would have thought of more shot movements which we could use to transition into other scenes and actions I feel like that could have given the ad a nice flow. Whether this would have became too much or lose my original desire for a fast pace I am uncertain.

All in all, I am not as satisfied with the piece of work as I was with emiT, but I have learnt from it: plan more.

 a. How does the final advertisement compare with your original intentions? Reflect on your documentation, e.g., you storyboards and other pre-production, final advertisement and audience/peer/tutor feedback. 
b. Self-evaluation: Reflect on how satisfied you are with your final advert. Would you do anything differently if you were to undertake the task again? Finally, evaluate your own involvement in the project.